Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/14/25: Trump Humiliates Biden On Israel, China Floats TikTok Sale To Elon, Zuck On Rogan, New UFO Doc Reveals Shock Image

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump humiliates Biden with Israel negotiations, China floats TikTok sale to Elon, Zuck on Rogan tries to fool MAGA, new UFO doc reveals clearest image yet.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. There are some significant developments coming out of the Middle East as it appears, maybe, potentially, that a Gaza ceasefire may well be very close to having been negotiated. Joe Biden spoke about this yesterday. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Finally coming to fruition. I have learned many years of public service to never, never, never, ever give up. So I spoke to Prime Minister of Israel yesterday. I spoke to Amir at Qatar today. I look forward to speaking with President Sisi soon. We're pressing hard to close this. The deal we have a structure would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel, and allow us to significantly

surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who've suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started. They've been through hell. So many innocent people have been killed. So many communities have been destroyed. The Palestinian people deserve peace and the right to determine their own futures. Israel deserves peace and real security. And the hostages and their families deserve to be reunited.

And so we're working urgently to close this deal. And as we deal with immediate challenges, in my view, we have to look to the future. So Biden, they're trying to take credit for this potential deal. All indications are that he deserves no credit for this deal whatsoever. I want to come back to that because I want to talk a little bit about the outlines of what is at least being reported and what's being shared. The contours of this potential ceasefire deal is put C4 up on the screen drop site. Our friends over there are doing incredible incredible work as usual reporting this out. They say a source close to the negotiations told DropSite that Hamas had accepted a final draft of the agreement

with no new demands or proposed amendments, was waiting for Israel to accept the deal. Two local sources citing Egyptian sources are also reporting Hamas has agreed to the final draft. In addition, Sagar, there was a draft of the agreement that has been reported at this point. And it looks pretty much exactly like the deal that was crafted back in May, June, July. You'll recall Biden came out and gave a big speech. Oh, Israel has accepted this deal. We're waiting for Hamas to accept. That was always total and complete bullshit. In reality, it was always Israel and Bibi Netanyahu in particular that

were throwing up new objections and trying to change the deal. Hamas has long been willing to accept this deal. And now here we are months later, many more people killed, devastated, having suffered more rubble, more destruction during all those months, coming back around to the very same deal. And, you know, as I said, Biden here trying to take credit for a ceasefire deal that maybe is coming together in the final days of his administration. But if we put put C3 up on the screen, the reporting is that actually, really, it was not Joe Biden that got this done. It was Trump's Mideast envoy who put the screws to Netanyahu and said, you're going to accept this Gaza plan and this is going to happen before Trump ultimately takes office. And there's so much to say about this, Agar. I mean, first of all, just the utter pathetic nature of all of

the lies and gaslighting and moral depravity of the Biden administration lying time to, oh, we're really being tough on Netanyahu. We're really trying. We're working day and night to secure a ceasefire deal. Bullshit. Bullshit. Because when the U.S. finally said, no, this is going to happen. Guess what? Even though this is actually going to be politically difficult for Bibi Nanyan. We'll talk about that more in a moment. Guess what? It's happening. Biden had plenty of leverage to use. Israel could not have pursued this genocide without the full support and backing of the United States of America. Biden was never willing to pull any aspect of that support. And so, yeah, lo and behold, ceasefire didn't happen. Now, I will say, I think, you know, Bibi wanted Trump to win.

I think that there's long been a plan in place basically to give Trump his ceasefire deal before he takes office. It is very reminiscent of like the Iranian hostage deal and Reagan coming in and having bat channel with him, whatever. But that does not absolve Biden of culpability for having never been willing to put the screws to secure this outcome before this now very late date after so much devastation and destruction has occurred. So listen, there's a lot of questions still. It hasn't come to fruition yet. There's a lot of question marks. There's also a lot of question marks about what Trump is offering in return for securing the ceasefire deal. You know, the theories are probably he's going to allow them to annex the settlements in the West Bank, or there

could be a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or some other significant goody that he is trading in exchange for, you know, getting this ceasefire before he takes office. But again, the failures of Joe Biden here are so incredibly manifest and so incredibly disgusting. That's what I would look at this as, is that actually Trump, ironically, Biden's bear hug strategy was what? By keeping him close, you can tell him what to do. I actually think Trump has successfully now pulled off the quote-unquote bear hug by being more pro-Israel than Biden, but then behind the scenes being like, hey, listen, man, you got to wrap this shit up. He's like, I don't want to deal with this while I'm in office. And actually, this anecdote from the Israeli press is really interesting.

It says Steve Witkoff called from Qatar to tell Netanyahu he was coming to Israel the next afternoon. The aides have been trying to delay this whole thing because they don't want to do it. We're like, oh, he's on the Sabbath. You can come later. Witkoff's quote, blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English, Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus, in an unusual departure from official That is very reminiscent of the Clinton quote, like, who's the effing superpower? Whenever he got off the phone with Israel. I mean, it just goes to show that when you do even put modest pressure here, was Trump ever really going to cut Netanyahu off from arms?

I don't think so. I don't think it would have been politically tenable for him. But, I mean, allegedly that's what he was threatening behind the scenes. Or maybe they could screw with him a little bit. I was reading that they have a lot of problems with JDAM manufacturer and smart bombs and that they have all these things they need to import from the US. And he's like, well, maybe, you know, the export license takes three to six months instead of what, you know, the immediate fast track authority.

The point is even the modest amount of pressure here from the Trump team does seem to have put them, you know, to much more closer to the finish line. I mean, two with Hamas. The crazy thing about this deal is that, you know, in a lot of ways, Trump is reaping these benefits because this deal has not changed. It's the same deal. It's been on the table for months and months and months. It's always been there.

Trump just had to come in and use a little bit of coercion and force. And one of the ways that we know that to be true is that the Israeli right wing is freaking out about this and is pissed off at Trump for forcing Netanyahu to appear to take the deal. Yeah. Seems to be that.

Right. And I think the other piece of this is like, I mean, there isn't much more to destroy in Gaza. The idea that you were going to, quote unquote,

you know, fully annihilate Hamas was always fanciful. So, you know, I think it's kind of run its course. And Bibi has other goals in mind. For example, it was reported that Miriam Adelson gave Trump $100 million for his campaign in order for him to exchange back annexation in the West Bank. So, you know, that may be the next move for the Israelis. So again, there's a lot to, you know, let's not paint this like this is some world victory or like the pain for the Palestinians is ending here. There's still like a lot of question marks moving forward.

But, you know, I think it's all obviously very clear that if Biden had taken a hard enough line and really been willing to put the screws to Netanyahu, this could have ended long ago. And that will be his legacy. Like he oversaw a genocide in the Middle East. He aided and abetted it. He shipped the weapons. He knew what was going on. They, you know, all this, all these lies coming from the state of power, we don't really know and we're investigating. But you know better than we know how much devastation there's been, how many war crimes there have been, how just absolutely barbaric

these atrocities have been. And you have not only stood by and let it happen, you armed it, you pushed it forward. And you lied to American people, effectively, when you said you were working hard

to achieve a ceasefire. Right, because that's what the Trump thing really reveals. Yes, that's exactly right. It's like, dude, the guy got elected less than two months ago. Yeah, he's not even in office. It just does go to show the pressure behind the scenes. I will say this is at least somewhat hopeful for what makes me for Ukraine,

that he will put some pressure here and actually has happened. That one's going in the opposite direction. You had Mike Waltz come out and say, actually, we want the Ukrainians to draft the HVAC. Do you know why I think that's a good idea? Because it makes the Ukrainian population be like, hold on a second. Do we actually want to do that?

Because now they have to decide. It's like, oh, you can keep the war going, but you're going to have to sacrifice all your war dead or all of your entire young generation who's not dead, or we can all make a deal and make this go away.

These people can be alive. That's how I viewed it. I may be wrong. We'll see. We'll see on that one. Hey, listen, you got to give him credit for this. You have to give the Trump team credit for this. It's incredible. Because this just shows you it wasn't that hard the whole time. We're just people on YouTube, okay? But at the very beginning, it's about a balance of power. There's a balance sheet about the amount of aid that's flowing in, how dependent the military is. Anybody can read this spreadsheet. It's published by the State Department. We've been talking about it now for almost 18 months. And the whole time, we're like, all you got to do is put a little bit of pressure on them, as we've seen in the past.

Yeah. Wasn't hard. No, that's absolutely right. And it's less even, like, I don't think this was, and I do think Bibi wanted to play ball more with Trump, wanted to give him this victory. There's no doubt about that. But the failure of the Biden administration here is absolutely undeniable and absolutely unforgivable as well in terms of the way that they've comported themselves. And, you know, like I said, we'll see how it comes together and we'll also see what was given in exchange, because that's the other part that is going to be very important. But to your point, Sagar, domestically, there's a lot of questions about what this is going to look like for Bibi Netanyahu. There was already kind of a freakout happening on Israeli television. We can put C2 up on the screen. I'll just read you a little bit of the translation of what is being said in this Hebrew language clip. If we can go ahead and play C2. They say this

Netanyahu proxy laments, we're the first to pay a price for Trump's election. The deal is being forced upon us. We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they let us impede humanitarian aid. That's part of what is being said here. So a lot of upset among, you know, right wing Israelis, of which there are many about this, about this potential deal. Go to C5 now and we can talk Shael Ben-Ephraim, who we've had on this show, who's like a liberal Zionist. He lays out what he thinks that Bibi thinks he can survive this ceasefire with Trump's help. There are two parts to his strategy. He says first, he's patted his coalition to make it Ben-Gavir proof. Ben-Gavir being one of the, you know, basically terrorists that are in this coalition. Of course, I think they're all

terrorists, but anyway, put that aside. Netanyahu successfully played divide and conquer between Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, who were the two most extreme parts of his coalition. They hate each other, and Smotrich is willing to stay if Ben-Gavir leaves. Netanyahu also brought in Gideon Saar, tore off a Don role from Yesh Atid and Al-Nagco. And I don't know who these people are away from Ben-Gavir. But anyway, he's saying divide and conquer between those two. And now he's got the numbers. Second, he's hoping to get help from Trump. That will come in the form of one or more of the following. Normalization with Saudi Arabia, which Saudi is still holding to. It would require some at least track towards a two-state solution. So I don't know if that one is coming, but we'll see. An attack on the Iranian nuclear

facilities or annexation of the settlements in the West Bank with American approval. So that's what I was referring to before. I think that is quite likely to occur, given what we know about Miriam Adelson's priorities. Then he will say to the Israeli people that he got the hostages back, defeated Hezbollah, killed Sinwar and Nasrallah, that Lebanon and Syria now have new regimes and will add the extra assets, Trump adds. He will say the war was worth it for all that, that the Middle East is transformed. Many will agree his chances was worth it for all that, that the Middle East is transformed. Many will agree his chances of survival are good. And Zagre, you have to say, I mean, you remember after October 7th, Bibi Netanyahu's political goose was cooked. I mean, his approval rating was as low as it could be. People blamed him because he was Mr. Security. He was supposed to be the leader who would always

keep the Israeli people safe. And he failed in that. October 7th occurs. Horrors, you know, traumatic horrors for the Israeli people. And his whole view of propping up Hamas in order to, you know, again, divide and conquer between the West Bank and Gaza and make sure that since it was Hamas in control in Gaza that he could always say, oh, there's no partner for peace. We'd love peace, but there's no partner for peace, so we can't possibly have peace negotiations. That strategy dramatically failed on October 7th, and yet here he is. Here he is, an absolute political survivor, having held on, having delayed any sort of investigation into the failures of October 7th.

Because remember, also, they knew in advance. They had the insight into the plans in advance. They had spotters who were there close to Gaza who were saying they're planning something big that they ignored. They had moved some of the IDF forces up to protect their extremist thug settlers in the West Bank, leaving the people near Gaza very vulnerable. The response on that day, chaotic, absolute catastrophe, disaster. And he forestalled all the questions on that, pushed him out into the future again and again and again, and now here he is, still surviving and still likely to maintain his power in the state of Israel. Absolutely unbelievable. Yeah, no, it's pretty crazy. I mean, he's survived, and you can

always give him credit, I guess, for that in being a survivor, but he does still have, you know, some interesting pushback inside of his own country. I genuinely wonder what's going to happen because the release of all of the hostages basically allows the Israeli left to, or whatever is reminiscent of whatever it is, to at least ask some big picture questions about the war and what it could return maybe even to debates around the settlers. I mean, remember, there is a portion of Israeli society that's not pro-settler. It's hard to believe, but it's actually true. There's a lot of debate, you know, inside of the country previously.

Some of that has been squashed now because of the ongoing war. But now that the war is effectively over, now these big picture questions are like, do we want Gaza? Do we want, remember, Syria, you know, which is currently happening. I was actually reading behind the scenes, too, the Trump people called Bibi and they're like, cool off in Syria. They're like, go on, you can stop there. But beyond that, like, we don't need to go any further because they also, they were like,

we don't need some war breaking out between the new Syrian government, if you want to call that, and the Israelis. They're like, maybe we just keep things where they are. So it's clear that at the very least, they're trying a containment strategy. Biden tried it too. But I think the key, the real lesson is America is still a superpower. Our power and our ability to course is immense when we want it to be. It's actually stunning to see it be used again. I've been waiting for this for a long time. As you said, look, if you're some pro-Palestine person, you ain't going to

get what you want out of this administration. This is probably as good as it's ever going to be for you. Just giving you a warning. But the lessons that you guys tried during the Biden administration was correct. American power is supreme. It has the ability to compel any state, even Israel, to be brought to heel and to do what we want. Now let's use this lesson for all other nations across the world, for Ukraine and for others, and to actually, for our own benefit, for once in a goddamn while.

I wanted to also, just a few details about this deal and what, again, it hasn't been signed, sealed, and delivered, so I want to, you know, reserve complete judgment, but based on what is being reported, it doesn't require Hamas

to be out of government. I mean, effectively, like, they did not destroy Hamas, and Hamas is very likely to take control on the Gaza Strip again. So again, Shael, who is the liberal Zionist we've had on the show previously, he says the reason this happened, he says the victory for Hamas is remarkable. Those are his words.

It is remarkable that all of these previous red lines for Israel are being waived. The reason this happened is clear, he writes, despite incredible victories on the battlefield. Israel has not offered a political program to replace Hamas or move to remove them from Gaza as a governing force. It has failed to translate IDF gains into political ones that has, in essence, nullified all of this horror bloodshed women children being murdered schools hospitals mosques churches destroyed after all of that hamas is still going to be in charge so i which again you and i could have told them on day one and tried to but nobody you know listens to listens to us so um so in any case that's that's where things are ending up. There was one more piece here that I wanted to get to because now that it doesn't matter anymore, suddenly a few media organizations have gotten around to reporting on the horrors that our government and our tax dollars went to fund in the Gaza Strip. Put C8 up on the screen.

So this is from 60 Minutes. They interviewed a number of the people from the State Department who had resigned over our support of these whores. They interviewed this former U.S. diplomat who said she documented images coming out of Gaza for the State Department, quote, fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of mostly children. Again, these people knew everything that was going on. They know more than we know about the horrors that were perpetrated here. And rather than doing anything to put pressure on Israel, and Jack Lew admits in his, it was the ambassador to Israel,

admits in his exit interview that we never really put any real pressure on Israel and Jack Lew admits in his, it was the ambassador to Israel, admits in his exit interview that we never really put any real pressure on Israel whatsoever. Instead, they continue to green light these horrors. And this last one, again, this is like a media commentary. This is again, 60 Minutes as part of this broader package that they do. They have, across the now decimated Gaza Strip, America's mark is everywhere.

In footage shot by CBS News in May, the ground is littered with U.S.-made ammunition casings, some used to prop up tents, others turned into play things by children. You had this footage in May. Why are you only releasing it now that it doesn't matter? Now, after the fact, when probably a ceasefire deal is, you know, in the offing in the next possibly even today. You've had this since May and you said nothing. So, I mean, I guess like good job for finally getting around to caring about these horrors, but could have been a lot more useful and a lot more important and a lot more courageous, by the way, back in May when you actually obtained this footage. And, you know, you're seeing a significant amount of this, Sagar. I mean, there was a big New York Times report relatively recently

that confirmed some reporting we covered a year ago coming out about the way Israel was operating in the Gaza Strip and how many civilian casualties they were perfectly comfortable with tolerating and the way that they were using these power targets, apartment buildings, hospital schools, in order to try to inflict pain explicitly on the civilian population in hopes they would turn against Hamas, finally confirming this reporting, again, at a time when it doesn't really matter all that much anymore, except for the analysis of history, which I guess is theoretically better than nothing. Yep, theoretically better than nothing. I think that's a good way of putting it.

But nonetheless, it's a crazy development. Absolutely. Lots of lessons, shall we say. So the next time this whole thing breaks out, because we all know that's going to happen. Yeah. I don't know. I give it, what, three years? That's usually the cool-off period that happens? I don't know. I think they may go after the West Bank

here pretty quickly. There's already indications of that, but we'll see what happens. They could, but if they do, I mean, I hate to say it, but a lot of those people have been thrown out of there, right? You know, these settlers have already kind of moved in and made their territory. Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, is there even an ability to resist?

I think Ryan just did a story about the West Bank. Or Dropsite just did some story about the West Bank and resistance. Anyway, we'll cover it, obviously. But the best thing, what the Trump people need to do, or want to do, and this was always a case made to me by all these folks, is they're like, look, you're not going to like a lot of this rhetorically. They're like, but Trump has an anathema to conflict. And while, yeah, you say a lot of things, but

in general, chaos, he especially understood during the Biden era, how much that can sink you from Afghanistan to Gaza to Ukraine. The ongoing chaos and the inability to wind these things up is actually very politically detrimental in a way I frankly would not have predicted in terms of how much people, when they want to, will pay attention to foreign affairs and at least absorb this feeling of everything has gone awry. So Trump is probably going to try his best to keep that contained. Now, look, a lot of the enemy gets a vote and not just the enemy. A lot of people get the vote. You got Hamas and all these other people can decide how they're going to absorb this. You've got Ukraine and Russia. Obviously, they need to come to terms by themselves, even with significant amounts of pressure. There's

so many different global problems that are still out there. The Houthis, there's a whole entire campaign that's happening. So anyway, we will be, I don't predict that things will be all rosy for the next four years, but I am at least heartened to see this. One last thing to note is I referenced this interview from Ambassador Jack Lew, who's the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

And not only did he say that, no, we didn't really try to stop him on anything, but he also did he say that, no, we didn't really try to stop him on anything. But he also says he thinks that this may have, well, sunk both Biden and Kamala Harris in terms of ability to get reelected. Yeah. He thinks that this could have been the political death knell for them. I don't think that's true. I mean, you can make a case, a small. Yeah, I don't think it's true.

Considering how close it was. I just don't think it's true. Considering how close it was, I think there's a relatively persuasive case. And, you know, when we interviewed those, like, working class, like the people who voted for Trump and AOC. Yeah. A surprising number of them talked about, you know, war and peace and talked specifically about Gaza. So it's hard to say, but it's obviously noteworthy that this, you know, prominent U.S. official, he at least thinks that this was responsible for sinking Biden and by extension Kamala Harris.

Certainly possible. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

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And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Should we get to the latest with TikTok? The latest from TikTok. Now, I love this story for a variety of reasons. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. China discusses sale of TikTok US to Elon Musk as one possible option. This is from Bloomberg News and has now been actually confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. And what is amazing about this story, Crystal, is I think that there is something for everybody. One, of course, Elon is involved. Two, why is Elon involved? Because he has a very, very close relationship to the Chinese government because of Tesla, Giga Shanghai. Tesla is heavily reliant

on China for batteries, for minerals. Elon himself has said a lot of very questionable things about the CCP in the past, so they're assuming that they can play ball. But here is my personal favorite line in these stories, Crystal. The Chinese government has not communicated with ByteDance about the contingency plans it has considered. As in, ByteDance, you have no say who you're getting sold to if you do get sold. You will be sold to whoever China decides that you will be sold to. Kind of validates the reason why I think it should be banned, doesn't it? Is that they have literally zero control over their own corporate affairs. And in fact, ByteDance replied and commented on the story and was like, we have no comment on this supposed fiction. And it's like, guys, it has nothing to do with you.

That's what you don't seem to get. The reason why the Chinese are considering selling to Elon is two birds with one stone. They've already got Elon. They have him, you know, in terms of their ability to put pressure and control on him. Is it most of his wealth tied up in the Chinese economy? Not the most. No? But I mean, the thing is, the vast majority of his wealth is in Tesla. Tesla is a huge player

in China, even though they have to compete with Giga Shanghai. It's one of their biggest producers. And in fact, while those Teslas are banned from the United States, they are already being sold as far as Canada, right here in North America, all across the European Union, which don't have as strict export controls. Giga Shanghai is tremendously important to the company.

That's just manufacture. Batteries, the stuff that goes into the Tesla, almost 100% reliant of all of the technology. So the actual battery, the lithium, the minerals, all of the refining. I forget the name of the company. It starts with a C. The major battery manufacturer that is Chinese is heavily, is a big supplier. The point is, is that he's very, very reliant on the Chinese government. And he has met with them many times. He even has, I think, a Weibo account or whatever it's called on Chinese social media being like, happy birthday to the CCP, which he's posted in the past. I've

done a monologue. You can go watch it. So they have a good relationship with Elon. Two, Elon is a close ally of Trump. Trump wants to save TikTok. So who do you sell it to? You sell it to Elon. Yeah. You know, kind of a vassal of the king. Somebody, if you think back to aristocracy. It's kind of a clever solution, to be honest. No, it's genius. Listen, you can say a lot about these people.

They're smart. They know, they understand our country much better than we understand our country. I played that famous speech before, the Chinese professor being like, you think we don't know how to control Hunter Biden? You know, talking about that. Yeah, that's right. But when you play the long game and you don't have to get elected, it's easy. What you can see from this is that they have decided a specific way to get out of this is to curry favor with Trump, curry favor with their oligarch, the richest man in the United States, who they already have significant control over, and use those two to do what? We concede on TikTok, which at the end of the day, TikTok is worthless to China. And in exchange, we get what? A nice little deal on tariffs. Maybe we say that this is a big gesture to Donald Trump, to Elon. We curry all this

political favor, and maybe we get Elon to stop posting certain types of things about Uyghurs or whatever. Oh, who knows? Maybe we do a little bit of China, Taiwan trading, and all of that. And I honestly think you have to give them credit. It's smart for what they do. They saw this. They're just going to tell ByteDance what to do. ByteDance has zero say over its own affairs. But by facilitating said sale, they already know Elon has Twitter. They also know that if anybody has the amount of wealth and the ability to tap hundreds of billions of dollars in credit lines if needed, as long as a network of wealthy friends to buy TikTok, they may even sell it to them at a loss. They don't care about the money. Because let's say they sold it to him at a loss. They don't care about the money because let's say

they sold it to him for a hundred billion and he saves, and then Trump gives them a favorable tariff rate. They save what? 600 billion a year. That's nothing to them. TikTok is just a pawn in all of this. So honestly, it's a genius solution. We really do have to hand it to him. I mean, and we'll see if it happens, obviously. Like you said, TikTok says it's pure fiction, blah, blah, blah. Right, but they have no, they don't know because they don't even control their own company.

This guy, the Singaporean or whatever, he works for the guy in the bike dance. Like he doesn't even, he's a subsidiary of his own company. And then that company is a subsidiary and foreign policy arm of the Chinese government. So the labyrinthian way that this all works is just always so hard to explain to a Western audience because it's so foreign. In Asia, this is very common. Like Samsung is an extension of the Korean

government. Toyota is an extension of the Japanese government. Yeah, they're freer societies, but it's still like this. Here, I mean, look, you can say what you want about Apple, Facebook, or whatever. The level of the gap between the two is just way bigger, even if it's closer than it may have been. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But I'm just saying, like, it's not a done deal, so we'll see if it comes to fruition. But, I mean, the other piece of this is, like, it just makes Elon even more powerful.

Powerful, yes. Already, he is the richest man on the planet, which means that you inherently have tremendous power. He has obviously the most influence in the Trump administration of any other actor. And including has kind of like come up against, has already gone to war, gotten his priorities realized through spiking that spending deal that had restraints on high-tech investment in China that was important to him. He got that stripped down. So he has won every battle in terms of the Trump administration thus far. We'll see where it goes from here. So he has that going for him. He owns Twitter, which continues to be extremely influential, both obviously now it's like the beating heart of the MAGA Republican movement, but it also continues, I think, to be incredibly influential in terms of elite opinion and understanding of political trends. I think it's probably an undersold factor, to be honest with you, in some of the sort of like, you know, more MAGA receptivity shift among a lot of elites.

I mean, number one, they're looking out for, OK, we don't want to be thrown in prison. We don't want our contracts canceled, et cetera, et cetera. But also, if you're taking in the conversation on Twitter, you're assessing, if you're extrapolating that to how the country feels at large, well, Twitter is a very right wing space now. So that's going to impact how you view the opinions of the country at large. So he owns Twitter. And now if you own TikTok as well, like the app among young people, and you're able to influence like Twitterify what's going on there as well and boost your own brand and your own self-interest, et cetera. Like that is a colossal amount of power to be vested in one unelected individual. And, you know, so his,

like the previous hawkish orientation towards China, I would be skeptical that that continues under the Trump administration this time around because it does not serve Elon's interest. Obviously, it was very important to him to get to win in this H-1B fight. It appears that he has won in that H-1B fight. It's certainly any sort of like, you know, contracts that he wants for his companies, whatever. He's already a massive government contractor. These regulatory fights that he's engaged in with various federal government agencies. I'm sure those are all going to go away. Concerns from the SEC about market manipulation, from the Labor Department about discrimination, all of those about from the NLRB about union business, all of those things are going to be gone. Like he really is going to have both tremendous

political, financial, and cultural power. He already does. But TikTok would just further expand the amount of power that this one individual would have. There is one person in the MAGA movement who is not taking this lying down. Yes, that's right. Steve Bannon put this up on the screen from USA Today. They had all the juicy quotes from Steve Bannon who did an interview.

This was in like an Italian newspaper, I think, which is why we don't have like a video of him saying it. This was all in the context of that interview. He calls Elon Musk an evil guy and vows to stop his influence over Trump. Good luck with that. In any case, let me read you some of these juicy quotes. He says, before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it, referring to the $250 million Musk contributed in the 2024 campaign to help Trump's election. I'm not prepared to tolerate it anymore, which let me just pause there and say, I don't know what you thought you were getting, buddy, but no one puts in $250 million and thinks they're getting nothing out of it.

And Elon's ideology was very easily ascertainable before this moment. So I don't know what you thought you were getting in this deal. But anyway, this was entirely predictable. He goes on to say, not only is he a truly evil guy, I will take this guy down. He says, I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. I doubt it. Before. And then he goes on to say the thing about the money.

Then he says he should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States? We've seen peak Elon, his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the true issues, and quite frankly, his support of just himself. The sole objective is to become a trillionaire. That's his objective, his aggregation of wealth, and then through wealth, power. That's what he's focused on. The American working people in this country are not going to tolerate it. I don't know. They seem like they're tolerating it. Yeah, he certainly, yeah. I was like, by the way, Elon is enormously popular with the Republican Party. Sorry. He also expanded on

some of this in video. Let's take a listen. He's got a glass jaw. He can't take, because of the, I don't know, the autism or worries on the spectrum, he's clearly not. He's got the maturity of an 11-year-old. You can tell that. But he, it's obvious. He can't take criticism. He, one of his weaknesses is that he needs to be loved. He needs the masses to love him. You can tell he's on the stage. He needs that glory. This is to have a digital ghetto and to only have raised up what praises him.

That is like the little boy's mentality. If I want to be the superhero, I want to put the cape on and kind of skip around. You see this a lot in Danbury. These, what they call chomos, what they call these sex offenders. They've got this, they've had a maturity level that has stopped. And they want to, you know, they want to be, they all watch the movies that have the Cape Crusaders on there. Wow. Very powerful to hear Steve Bannon expand on his experience in federal prison. That's what the Danbury is in reference to.

Danbury's in Connecticut. I think it's a low security facility where they also house sex offenders. So for context, that's where that comes from. Also- He goes there, doesn't he? Yeah. Vivek Ramaswamy has not been heard from

in quite a long time. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was his last tweet, January 3rd, 2025. It is currently January 14th, the day that we are filming this. He's been completely disappeared from Doge tweets, from mention in the press. This is a guy who probably, I mean, what should we say? He's been tweeting nonstop for, I want to say four years. I would say four years. You would know better than me.

Yeah, that's probably right. It's crazy. I've known him for a long time. He's inserted himself into every cultural conversation. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's a pro at getting attention,

getting himself first on Fox News and selling his book and his brand. Wrote his book in 2021. Yeah, I still have the dms i'm gonna be like can i come on your show to talk about my book um and uh the anti-woke book yeah exactly come on it's been a while i haven't heard from you uh and he's a poster he's look you gotta give it to him he's smart and he posted his way to name recognition uh and a significant you know

presence in the republican party yeah you have to respect that to a significant presence in the Republican Party. You have to respect that to a certain extent. But a huge part of that was Twitter and elite conversation as well. The stunts, cultivating his relationships, et cetera.

And he has been unheard of come nobody has heard from him. I genuinely think it might be one of the longest stretches in the last four years that he has not tried to insert himself in the conversation,

especially for somebody who loves and craves attention so much. So it's pretty extraordinary that nobody has. And look, there could be problems between him and Elon, right? But from the previous posts that he's made, there could be problems that are happening in terms of him causing the shutdown. Previously, people got really, really upset with him and Elon over that. Elon is too powerful, so maybe they take out Vivek. Maybe Trump just called him and was like, hey, you're done. You're not posting anymore. But nobody knows what it is, so we'll see. Matt Lutz tweeted, imagine being a month from power and you blow your career up with a rant about the phrenology of Saved by the Bell. You know, okay,

so I don't watch Saved by the Bell. I've never seen the show. Really? But apparently the character who he said he didn't like actually got a higher SAT score. Yes, Zach. I didn't know that. Zach is like, you've got to know.

Zach is like a blonde, good-looking guy. So no, I've watched Boy Meets World. I'm familiar. Screech is like the sort of nerdy, dorky, kind of goofy character. And so he was saying like, oh, we should be lionizing Screech. But yeah, if you know you're saved by the bell lore, you know that Zach

actually got like a 1500 on his S&P. I did not know. So there you go. Anyway, whatever. It was stupid. He called white people lazy and now they disappeared from the party effectively. Hilarious. My read is that he's effectively taking the fall for Elon. Yes. You know, that Trump was probably irritated by this whole fracas in his coalition. He didn't like it. And so he's really, I mean, this is all, I'm just speculating, but I suspect he looked at this post from Elon, from Vivek and was like, what the hell are you thinking about with this? Because it really did, you know, putting all of the like policy debate aside like trump's whole thing is he realigned the republican party towards a non-college educated base centered around the

white working class and now that screed from vivek is like a direct indictment of white working class culture i mean if hillary clinton tweeted something like, forget about it, like, there would be meltdowns, everyone would be so enraged, blah, blah, blah. And so, Fink does that, and now, yeah, he hasn't really been heard from. So, it is kind of funny. Just to go back quickly to the Bannon-Musk war, like, as I said before, that war for Bannon is already lost. It was lost when that deal was made for all the money to go into the Trump campaign, like Elon was going to get what he wants out of this administration. And I think there's a, Bannon is an ideological person, right? He has a very structured, thought out worldview that he is relatively consistent in applying. The only way

he's really not consistent in applying it is when Trump fails him. There's never any smoke for Trump. It's only for, you know, the people around Trump who always mislead him. It's never Trump's fault, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he has a well-thought-out ideological worldview. And I think he assumed that the MAGA base really, you know, and I'm not talking about like the online influence. I'm talking about the random rank and file people throughout the country who voted for Donald Trump, right? That they were similarly ideologically driven. And I just don't think that's true. I mean, not to say that there aren't some like desires of policy impetuses, but at the end of the day, what we've seen with Trump is it doesn't matter where he is on an issue. What

matters is people will support him wherever he is on the issue. I mean, the thing he said, he understood it far better than Steve Bannon did when he said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would still support me. The only area where I've ever seen the base push back on Donald Trump is around vaccines. Yeah, that's true. That's really the only area. And the one person that got really spiked outside of Matt Gaetz, which was like, that's kind of a separate story,

but the one person who got spiked by the MAGA base in terms of this confirmation process was some sheriff who had done like COVID lockdowns. Oh, the DEA guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for DEA. That was the one that there was a real like grassroots, we aren't gonna have this guy shut down churches during COVID. Like that's the one area where I've seen Trump be push it on the base. On everything else, like he his main accomplishment in this first term was a tax cut for the rich. It wasn't looking out for the working class. There's been so many on TikTok. He totally changes his colors. It doesn't matter on, you know, on crypto. He totally changes his colors. It doesn't matter. On, you know, on crypto, he totally changes his colors.

It doesn't matter. There's no backlash to any of that. It wasn't even on H1B, right? This is as core to the Trumpist view of the world as it could possibly be about foreign workers coming in, taking American jobs, blah, blah, blah. He sides with Elon. Has there been a mass backlash again? No, no, not at all. Few online influencers. And they by and large, by the time he weighed in, shut their mouths and got with the program too. So if you're expecting some sort of grassroots MAGA revolt against Elon and, you know, in favor of some ideological version of Trump, like don't hold your breath.

It's not coming. It's never happened in the past. It's not going to happen now, outside of this one narrow thing of the way they feel about Zach. Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. I do think that Bannon, to the extent that he could be successful,

is only in whispering in Trump's ear. Trump does seem to trust him. You know, he likes him. They talk on the phone, et cetera. But, you know, Bannon's just going to be doing his show. He's not going to be in the White House or even in the way that he was in the first term. He can try his best, but he's only one of a variety of side characters. So there we go. All right. We've got Matt Stoller standing by to talk about Mark Zuckerberg. Let's get to it. Over the past six years of making my

true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

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And this is season two of the war on drugs. We are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star studded a little bit, man. We got a Ricky Williams,

NFL player, Heisman trophy winner. It's just the compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So we are very pleased to be joined this morning by our great friend Matt Stoller, who writes the big newsletter over there on Substack. That's what I'm trying to say.

And also is a researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project. Great to see you, my friend. Good to see you, man. Hey, thanks for having me. So we saw Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan podcast saying some very interesting things and immediately thought the person that we want to hear from on this is Matt Stoller. Specifically, he made kind of a similar move to Marc Andreessen of, let me talk about some like cultural things that I think will resonate with the Republican, like conservative base. And let me go ahead and then you turn into trashing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and any other agencies that

are trying to come after and regulate my businesses. Let's take a listen to a little bit of how that went. They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something, you know, you're going to see an ad that says, OK, if you took a COVID vaccine, you're eligible for this kind of payment, this sort of class action lawsuit type meme. And they're like, no, you have to take that down. We said, no, we're not going to take down humor and satire. We're not going to take down things that are true.

And then at some point, I guess, I don't know, it flipped a bit. I mean, Biden, when he gave some statement at some point, I don't know if it was a press conference or to some journalists, where he basically was like, these guys are killing people. And, I don't know, then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating coming after our company. It was brutal. It was brutal. It was brutal. And we had organizations that were looking into us that were like not really involved with social media. Like the CFPB, like this financial – I don't even know what it stands for. It's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren had set up.

Oh, great. And it's basically – it's like we're not a bank. The debanking section. Yeah. So we're not a bank. The debanking section. Yeah, so we're not a bank, right? It's like, what does Meta have to do with this? But they kind of found some theory that they wanted to investigate. And it's like, okay, clearly they were trying really hard, right, to like find some theory.

But it like, I don't know, it just, it kind of like throughout the party and the government, there was just sort of, I don't know, it just it kind of like throughout the the the the party and the government, there's just sort of I don't know if it's I don't know how this stuff works. I mean, I've never been in government. I don't know if it's like a directive or it's just like a quiet consensus that like we don't like these guys. They're not doing what we want. We're going to punish them. Probably the most the part of that that irritates me the most is him playing dumb like he doesn't know what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is. But in any case, Matt, if you could break down what he had to say there and what you think he's really up to. Yeah. So the whole thing is, it's one of these things where there's so much dishonesty packed

into such a short amount of time, it's hard to convey it. But let's just start with the timing. OK. So Mark Zuckerberg is pretending that he doesn't know anything about banking regulation and that the only time that he encountered it is when, you know, they were scuffling with the Biden administration over COVID speech. And then all of a sudden, this random bureau that he's never heard of went after him. OK, so one of his first early major hires was Sheryl Sandberg. And she worked at Treasury. Right. She was Larry Summers, his chief of staff at Treasury. And he hired her explicitly because of that. He said he said Facebook is more like a government than a business. We're really setting policies. That's why we're hiring Sheryl Sandberg.

I don't I don't know why people forget about this, but Facebook tried to launch a currency. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. We all covered it together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not hidden, right? Mark Zuckerberg testified before the banking committees in Congress, right? I mean, he's testified before the committees saying, here are all the things we we wanna do with our payment, with our new currency system.'" And he defended himself and said,

that these are all of the things we're doing with regulators. And this is during the Trump administration. And the Trump administration killed Libra, which was the currency system, right? So it's not like this stuff started under Biden. It started way before Biden, way before COVID. And they have money transfer licenses in states, I think 49 out of 50 states, and they've had them for years. They have a system called MetaPay. They have a payment

system. They want to become a payments network and they are a payments network and they've been regulated that way for a long time. So Mark Zuckerberg knows about that. And he's just pretending otherwise so that he can frame himself as a, um, as a, uh, somebody who's currying favor with Trump, just like in 2020, uh, 2021, he was trying to curry favor with Biden by pretending to be progressive. He doesn't care about any of this stuff. Uh, he was trying to curry favor with Biden by pretending to be progressive. He doesn't care about any of this stuff. He doesn't care about censorship. He doesn't care about, he cares about policy concessions that he wants from the government. And I can go into a list of those policy concessions, but like what this guy is standing for is himself and making more money.

And that is, that's really all he, that's really all he wants. And to do that at this point with so much money and power that he has, he needs favors from the US government. That's what he's trying to get from Trump. What I was really interested to see is, you know, he really is a weathervane in some respects. So he follows the Twitter decision to take down Donald Trump after January 6th. Previously in the 2020 election, he donates all this money to kind of pro-democratic causes. He has now reversed DEI in his company. Actually, I think we have that tweet. Can we put it up there on the screen? All of the things that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg have done now in the last week or so, brought back political content,

ended DEI, hired a MAGA comm staffer, elevated Joel Kaplan, got rid of fact-checking, donated to the Trump inauguration. Added Dana White to his board of directors. Goes to Mar-a-Lago. Goes to Rogan. And we have all of these things. He moved to Texas, which in my view is in some ways the wildest. Yeah, moving the content moderation to Texas, which is equally hilarious. All of that tells us what? Is that this is a person who is trying to curry favor with the incoming administration. Now, you just talked about the actual political concessions, but let's get into that because we have these lawsuits that are going on against Mark Zuckerberg, against Meta.

We have many Republican AGs and others which have now longstanding legal theories and cases against this company. What do they have to lose if things don't go their way under a second Trump administration? You know, so as you were talking, I just remembered something else, which I think will really take it out of the partisan, the partisan context. You remember a while back when Mark Zuckerberg was trying to get into China and he asked Xi Jinping, the president of, the leader of China, to name his first-born child. Yes, I do remember that, yeah.

Right? I mean, so this is not like a guy that has strong principles, right? This is a guy, like, or at least he does, but they're about, you know, promoting Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's interest or Meta's interest, whatever they want to call it. So what does Mark Zuckerberg, what does Facebook actually want? All right, Facebook has a number of legal problems. The first is there's an antitrust suit that the Trump administration brought in 2020. And Mark Zuckerberg has called antitrust an existential threat to his company. And that will go to trial in 2025. Google lost a kind of similar case and is likely to lose another one. So Mark Zuckerberg knows that he could be in a lot of trouble

and he wants that to go away. He wants the Trump administration to settle that. There's also a, you know, remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal where they got fined by $5 billion by the Trump administration, the Trump FTC. So they continue to violate their promises to the government. And finally, the Federal Trade Commission said,

you can no longer track children, right? You can't advertise to children, use a targeting advertising. And when you release new products, you have to get prior approval because you have consistently violated your promises to the government like three or two or three or four times. And they are in a big legal fight over that. That would be a huge problem for them. And because they want to advertise to children because it's good business to addict children. And so they want that to go away. Right. That's that's another thing that they want. They also met a pay. Right. They want to become a big payments network. And Mark Zuckerberg talked about that.

That's part of the VR strategy, the augmented reality strategy. It's part of making the world more open and connected. That is what he talked about partly on Joe Rogan. That involves finance. So he's going to be regulated by the financial regulators. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau implemented a new rule to treat companies like Meta and Google and Amazon and other companies that have big payment networks to treat them like banks because that's what they're operating like. If you are handling someone's money, then you should be traded like either a bank or financial utility or a credit rating agency.

Like that's, you know, that's all financial regulation. So they want that to go away. Another example of something that Mark Zuckerberg needs is he has been training their AI model on illegally downloaded content. He personally gave the order to train on content that was downloaded via illegal means. And so they want certain changes to copyright law so that they can continue to expropriate content from people who make copyrighted material, including us. Right. I mean, this is all copyrighted material and train their AI on it so they can replicate our styles and systems and make money off of that. Some of the things he wants are not bad, right? Like he's really mad at Apple over the 30% app charge. And the government has an

antitrust case against Apple partly over that. So he would want that to continue. And then the other thing that he's been asking for is for the government to, the U.S. government, to protect Facebook when they go abroad. So there's a lot of foreign entities that are regulating Facebook and Meta and WhatsApp, like communication systems, right? If you're a domestic communication system, you're going to be regulated by that domestic government. And so he wants Trump to protect Facebook from rules around whatever

foreign company countries are trying to get. And sometimes that's not right. Sometimes it is great, whatever. But it's like, look, if you're operating in a foreign country, you have to obey their laws. And Mark Zuckerberg wants the US government to put pressure on foreign countries that are imposing laws that prevent him from making more money. There's a lot of other things that they want as well. There's an H-1B visa thing. You know, they have a lot of H-1B visa engineers. They've been violating labor law on that.

There's kind of a ton of stuff that they want. But effectively, at this point, Meta is a creature of policy. And so what he has to do to continue to grow or even to not be constrained or not have his company broken up is to capture the policymakers. And so that's what he's trying to do. That's what he's always tried to do, whether it's China, whether it's the progressives and Democrats, whether it's people all over the policymakers all over the world, whatever it is, that's just who he is and what he's trying to do. Last question for you, Matt. What role is Rogan serving in this? Because he just had, obviously, Zuckerberg on. He had Elon Musk on recently. He had Peter Thiel on recently. We

talked to you previously about Marc Andreessen, who also took aim specifically at CFPB and some of the way that he portrayed the CFPB clearly had landed with Rogan because he kind of reiterates that view to Zuckerberg and said, oh yeah, Elizabeth Warren's agency that does the debanking, which is just like total and complete bullshit. But in any case, what role is Rogan serving? Why are they feeling like this is the place to go and try to effectively fleece the MAGA base and convince them that their cultural goals are in line with, happen to line up with these companies' financial interests? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of sad. I have been a, like, I like listening to Joe Rogan. He's, he's a really good interviewer. I like, you know, I've listened to him for years. Uh, not, you know, I'm not a religious devotee

or anything, but I listen to him sometimes and I like, I like him. Uh, he's a, he's a cool interviewer. It's not annoying. He's generally been open-minded, but what has been disturbing or, you know, it's just kind of like maybe how he's going is that he's just become essentially like a a new Rush Limbaugh. Right. And it isn't that he's a partisan Republican, although he's kind of, you know, most a lot of the guests he's invited on or, you know, even when they're cultural, he sometimes pushes them on politics. It's not that he's a partisan Republican, though. It's that he's taken the kind of Wall Street big business, big tech part of the Republican apparatus, as opposed to the kind of right new right Josh Hawley sort of J.D. Vance approach. Although he says, you know, he is, and then he has Mark Zuckerberg on and doesn't really challenge him and has Mark Andreessen on and has Elon Musk on and just is like, oh, the big problem is the regulatory agency that's trying to stop poor people from like being

scammed by overdraft fees, except he says it's, you know, they're engaged in censorship, which isn't true. And it's just like sad to watch that because there is this really interesting populist part of the GOP. I mean, you guys were just talking about it. And, and yet Rogan has kind of moved away from that. And so to me, it's, it feels very much like listening to Pravda. Like, and I just, it just kind of, it, you know, it just kind of sucks to be like, oh, this guy used to be really good. And now you're like, you're getting sort of weird lies from him about, you know, that are coming from Wall Street billionaires. Yeah, I would, I love Joe. Obviously we've been on the show. I think a lot of it is just the tech

people themselves are skilled at this. And if you're not equipped with the backstory, as you and I just discussed, we know about Libra, the Xi Jinping thing. That's longtime lore for anybody who's been covering the ins and outs of Facebook or of Mark Zuckerberg and his various shifts in the winds. It's easy to be convinced, you know, if somebody has come to you and like, oh, they want us to censor a vaccine thing. And then they investigated our company. It's like, well, the investigation started in 2019, actually under the Donald Trump, you know, DOJ. These are all the key backstory. But we appreciate you coming on as well, Matt. We love you. And we'll see you again soon. Great to see you, Matt. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Dr Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

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It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Joining us now is James Fox. He is the director, documentarian with a new film out called The Program.

He previously has done Moment of Contact, The Phenomenon, I Know What I Saw, Out of the Blue, Moment of Contact, a personal favorite of mine. We've got a trailer and then we're going to be talking to James himself. Let's take a listen. In 2017, the New York Times published a story exposing a secret government program investigating UFOs. That story was kind of a catalyst for a lot of things that have happened since. Members of Congress started to ask questions. Instruments report there is something there. There are flight characteristics that we can't explain.

UAPs are unexplained. It's true. They need to be investigated. Here we are having a hearing where just a few years ago, we didn't even acknowledge that these things were real. Do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs? Absolutely. Based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years. You're telling me people have come forward claiming firsthand knowledge of craft of non-human origin. That's correct. So James, you've exposed a lot of new information

in this documentary, just as you have in the past. I was in the room for that hearing. It was a really exciting moment. Just tell us a little bit about why you decided to make this film after previous ones about specific incidents and some of the big things that you learned. So thanks for the intro.

I did the phenomenon. The natural progression was the program because the phenomenon hinted at crash retrievals. We went into Roswell, but then I took a break and I focused on an alleged UFO crash case that happened in Virginia, Brazil in 1996 and ultimately made a film about it called Moment of Contact. And the allegation is half the town has heard about it, that a UFO crashed and that live aliens were captured. And ultimately the United States flew in. And that was an aspect that I'd learned on my last trip to Brazil. I investigated the case over 12 years with a partner, Marco Leal, who's Brazilian, and a number of other folks. And so my natural progression was, okay, now that I'm pretty sure the Americans were involved in this crash retrieval, I'm going to go to Washington, D.C., and I'm going to investigate, like, because the case goes cold. Once the United States air force plane took off

from a place called campinas and back to the united states and we have the um brazilian control flight control officer who went on the record just recently um publicly describing that that united state he called it usaf united states air force plane they flew back to the states the case went cold but little did i know, five months after I released Moment of Contact, there would be a high-level intelligence officer testifying under oath to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that we have a crash retrieval program and that biologics work. So he opened the door for me. And so that made it a lot easier for me to ask those questions that I never in my 30-year

career thought I'd be asking city members of Congress, do we have aliens? Do we have recovered flying saucers? You'd think they would be asking me to up the doses of the medication that I'm not on, but that's where we are right now. And then you look at the legislation that's been written in the NDAA for 2023 and 2024, it's right there in black and white. You're exactly right. Back to travel, crash retrieval materials potentially, and legacy programs. So we're living in unprecedented times right now. James, what about the contours of the program were you able to uncover? I've been down this rabbit hole now for years. One of the most

frustrating thing I get from fans and others is they're like, you guys tell us it exists, but we only know things on the edges, the crumbs and others. You've done the best job in your film of actually bringing everything that we know to light. And what can you give away to us? What can you tell the audience? I would say that one of the aspects of the film that's jaw dropping, a slack jaw, I think is the exact terminology that was used. There is a high-level government official correspondence with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Christopher Mellon, that he shared. He eventually went through the DOPSR process, pre-publication approval. And it's a correspondence between a high-level

government official. Now, in the film, it's got some redactions, but it has the actual name of the gatekeeper to the crash retrieval program. And that unredacted version was given to select members of Congress and, I'm told, people at Arrow. So John Koskowski theoretically would have the name of the gatekeeper, certainly in 2020, of the Crash Retrieval Program. And I think that's an aspect that's huge. I mean, that means that there are members of Congress that have the name of who's in charge of this Crash Retrieval Program or the gatekeeper. Right. We have the gatekeeper. We have the name. And it is a frustrating process, but that's government. It takes a huge effort to make, to reveal a huge secret. That's something that I always say. James, with respect to your film bipartisan group of lawmakers working together for the American people. It's like, oh, thank you. This is such a breath of fresh air. Let's continue this.

Who knows that it took, you know, so-called aliens to get us to unite and work together. But but I would like to say it's very exciting. Some people feel like things aren't moving fast enough. I'll remind you, as someone who's been investigating this field, I've made six documentaries over the last 30 years. We've had three congressional hearings where we've had people testify under oath about the reality of the phenomenon, two people separately, one in 2023, David Grush, and another one in 2024, Lou Elizondo, testify under oath to a group of bipartisan lawmakers that we have a crash retrieval program. I'm reminded what Senator Rounds just recently said. I was there. I filmed

it. He said, I know things feel like they're moving slowly. I feel the frustration. Things aren't happening fast enough. We're not getting enough answers. I'll remind you that we are not running a 100-yard dash. This is a marathon. Stick with us. Let's continue providing support to this bipartisan group of lawmakers. And let's get to the bottom of it because the implications are global and so profound that we owe it to ourselves to continue to support.

James, while I have you, one of the things that has captured the nation's attention was this New Jersey drone, quote unquote, incident. And I'd be curious for your thoughts, not necessarily about the incident itself, but in the context of what you and I know from studying this issue, which is that we have had longtime incidents of unidentified craft being and interfering with US military installations, some of the video and other. I know you talk about some of this in your show, I think the 1994 incident in Ellis Air Force Base. And I'm curious if you could just shed some light about the patterns that we've seen now over the last 75 years in the United States

and how this might fit into that. Well, I'd say a very good case would be the two consecutive weekends in July of 1952, where you had incursions by these so-called orbs, UAP, UFOs. We had military jets scrambled. It was on the front page of every newspaper across the country, two consecutive weekends. And we scrambled military jets to intercept these things. They flew rings around us. I cover this extensively in the film The Phenomenon, but that was 1952. I mean, they had one of the biggest press conferences with General John Sanford at the time, who basically came forward back in 1952.

I have to keep saying that. It said, yeah, there's something really inexplicable going on. It's not us. We don't think it's a foreign adversary. We don't know what's going on. And it's like that seems to be a big repeat today. Now, I'll remind your audience that, yeah, the vast majority of UAP, of UFOs can and have been explained away in down-to-earth conventional terms. And I'm sure there's a lot of them up in the sky that are being misidentified.

Everyone's up in the night sky trying to get a glimpse of these things. But there's a core 15% or 20%. And I think that these recent drone sightings will ultimately have a core of 15%, 20% that seem to defy a terrestrial or a conventional explanation. Could I be wrong? I could absolutely be wrong. But that's my take on all the intel folks that I've been talking to recently, particularly 50 of these things came off the ocean and baffled the Coast Guard and police. Right. And when you hear the testimony from these law enforcement officials, what I often find

is important is to go lower down the rung because the lies are at the top, right? But when you hear from the people, the Coast Guard, the actual police officers, the governors, some of the state legislators, they have no idea what's happening. Not only do they have no idea, they're reporting to us about the ability to just, quote unquote, go dark. And then there's generally a temporary amnesia, you know, across the country where we just seem to forget about these things. But within the pattern, as you just set out, you laid out, that's an excellent part of the phenomenon. Actually, right where I am here in Washington, some of these incidents occurred here, you know, right over our own airspace. With all of this, it does seem as if some progress is being made in the last decade. I do credit that 2017 New York Times article. So any just last words

you want to say for why people should watch the film and put it in the context of this body of work in this moment in time? We are living in unprecedented times. There is a current effort happening right now, today, a push, unprecedented push for transparency on this issue. It's gotten the attention of lawmakers, household names, intel folks. There's whistleblowers coming forward. I'm told somewhere between 8 and 12 firsthand witnesses. Everyone's saying they want firsthand. Grush was not a firsthand. Firsthand witnesses that have met in skiffs behind the scenes.

Kirk McConnell, former Senate Armed Service Committee staff member, talks about it in the program. It's happening. Be patient. Continue to support. This story is going to be huge. All right. Well, I'd love to see it. Everybody patient. Continue support. This story is going to be huge. All right. Well, I'd love to see it. Everybody go watch the film. We'll have a link down in the description on where you can. And check out James's entire body of work, one of my favorite journalists on the issue. We appreciate you joining us, sir.

Thank you. Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Great counterpoint show for everyone tomorrow. And we will see you all on Thursday. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday.

Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key,

a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter.

I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.